Facebook Inc’s penetration rate in Taiwan is higher than in any other Asian market, said Dan Neary, vice president of the social networking giant’s Asia-Pacific marketing team, who arrived in the country on Tuesday.
According to Facebook data released earlier this year, the number of active Facebook users in Taiwan has reached 14 million per month, or about a 60 percent penetration rate, while the number of daily users has hit 10 million.
That figure represents the highest penetration rate in Asia, edging out Hong Kong — with about 58 percent — for the top spot. Facebook’s overall penetration rate in the region at the end of last year was 6.5 percent.
Neary also said that Taiwanese Facebook users have distinctive characteristics.
They are especially fond of sharing gourmet food photos on the site and using the “check in” function that allows users to log the places they have been.
Facebook now has more than 1.1 billion active members worldwide, 800 million of which access the site via smartphones, and user numbers have been growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, Neary said.
The company also has more than 1 million active advertisers worldwide even though it only entered the advertising business three years ago, he said.
Neary attributed the fast growth mainly to Facebook’s requirement that users use their real identities to access its platform, which helps advertisers get a higher response rate and avoid wasting time on non-target users.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Handset camera lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) on Sunday reported a 6.71 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for the third quarter, despite revenue last month hitting the highest level in 11 months. Third-quarter revenue was NT$17.68 billion (US$581.2 million), compared with NT$18.95 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The figure was in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$17.9 billion, but missed the market consensus estimate of NT$18.97 billion. The third-quarter revenue was a 51.44 percent increase from NT$11.67 billion in the second quarter, as the quarter is usually the peak
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
RSS